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The end of September is upon us and we have hardly had the time to realize what an impact some people have had on our lives.

Shortly after returning from our Honeymoon we were informed that a local friend had fallen ill and was in the hospital. He had been sick when we saw him the day before our wedding and we gave him our love and a hug before we left town. Within a few days after seeing him in the hospital a small group of friends started planning ways to help him and his family with medical costs. What first was a small barbecue quickly became a collaborative effort of friends and local businesses pulling their resources and manpower to pitch in.

In just over a week we have received almost 100 people who have promised to donate, contribute, and most of all, help our friend Eric when he needs us the most. I’m excited and overwhelmed by the love and responses from people willing to come together and make our city feel like a small town.

My husband and I have lived, worked, and loved being part of Long Beach for almost 10 years. We haven’t known him as long as others, but I can’t imagine a life, or a world, without him in it.

Which is why I haven’t been staying on task with my musings as much as I would like to. I’ve written have a dozen drafts and published none. I have an almost finished piece on my Bridal Shower but every time I go to finish it, or attempt to publish it, something else gets my attention and I am required to let it sit while I attend to my real world problems.

This blog/journal was an attempt to keep things positive and happy, and possibly introspective. I haven’t been feeling that way lately. We are at the 2 1/2 month mark from the wedding and I’m feeling…lots of things lately. I’ve been fairly productive with small projects, and our bathroom is under minor construction at the moment (FINALLY!), but that also means I have take a shower…for a few days. Yuck.

The most recent moment of note was watching Man of Steel with a group of some of my favorite people. That same day I got a sunburn, a sinus infection from the A/C at the movie theater, and mild food poisoning from the theater coffee as well. Yet, I still considered it the best day I had this past week.

FIRST EPIPHANY

I guess what I’m really trying to say is I feel lost. There are only a handful of people I feel comfortable talking to about some of the more serious issues going on in my life at the moment. I often get this ominous feeling of dread, or anxiety, at very stressful points in my life and not many people can handle being around me, or really want to help or be there for me. I’m a bit abrasive, on purpose or by accident from time to time. It’s one of my most charming traits. Just kidding. However, I still have feelings, and people tend to forget that. They feel they can treat me like what I want, or what I feel isn’t real because I’m just being “crazy” or lately the new nickname is “bridezilla.” That’s just rude.

SECOND EPIPHANY

I also recently realized that I’ve been trying SO hard to be considerate of everyone else all the time and have tried to not be a burden of everyone around me that I’ve walled myself up and just feel like I can no longer trust any of them by default.

When I say, “Wanna come with me to go shoe shopping and have a few drinks?” What I really want is just to spend time with you while being productive. “Wanna come over and play board games?” What I really want is to not talk about the wedding and just enjoy your company. “What’s going on with your wedding?” Cause I’m really tired of talking about mine. A lovely woman who I spoke to about my wedding with joy in my voice a few weeks ago asked me about my wedding the other day and all I could muster was an “Ugh” response. Then I felt horrible for even vocalizing it. It was during a work function and I didn’t want to be distracted, and I was a little stressed in that moment. I tried to be chat with her about other things to avoid having my grumpy side lash out at her by accident. She seemed receptive and the event went well without further ugliness.

THIRD EPIPHANY

I’ve tried so hard to keep my negative side in check for so long that I feel like I’m going to burst with crazy! What helped to deflate the volcanic eruption was a well deserved face-to-face lunch with my Best Friend and Maid of Honor. We get each others grumpy cat alter egos. We’ve had years of practice. We’ve both been on the receiving end of a verbal slap to the face from one another so that we can now help to burst that bubble before it has a chance to do more harm to any one else. However, at the end of yesterday I felt that sense of dread again. It wasn’t because my BF/MOH didn’t help, it was because it was more than just the little things that finally brought me down at the end of the day.

During my last (admittedly sporadic) session of stalking Twitter for interesting and amusing wedding-related content, I came across this highly entertaining photo of one of the better wedding RSVPs I’ve ever seen:

Now, wedding RSVPs are nobody’s favorite detail — except perhaps for the designers and stationers who cackle gleefully and rub their hands together thinking about all the piles of money they can get out of you for one tiny little square piece of fancy, recycled, eggshell-white paper with scalloped edges. Or whatever you end up using. Still, they’re one of those necessary evils. If you’re planning on having guests at your wedding — and let’s face it, most people are — you’re going to have to figure out how many of them are actually going to show up, where you’re going to exile some of them and for the love of god what you’re going to feed…

I started this blog 4 weeks ago, with the intention of writing two posts a week. I’ve written five, and one “post” was actually a quote by someone else.

Part of me wants to throw in the towel and say, “well I tried.” The other part of me, sees my current failure as an opportunity for… I don’t even know what. She says, “hey, instead of just two posts a week, you should do seven posts a week! That’s right, post something everyday. Muhahaha!” *crazy-eyes*

OK, maybe I didn’t sound that crazy, but I did start putting together a detailed calendar for the next few weeks outlining what each day’s post would be.

This is my typical process. I set up a medium-sized goal – something that is challenging but totally possible. Then, when I see myself failing to achieve that goal, I’ll up the ante and add in…

Time and time again I am plagued by my families stress inducing melodrama. No matter how hard I try to keep myself out of it, they manage to suck me back in.

—

This year, like every year, my Mother and Grandmother fought over who wasn’t going to be cooking Thanksgiving dinner. My Mom was supposed to be working all day, and my Grandma is too old to be cooking the entire dinner by herself, so this year I offered to make Thanksgiving dinner at our house. My first mistake. Before leaving for Spain I made plans to host a Test-Turkey Thanksgiving Potluck at our house. The Turkey came out perfect, everyone showed up and ate almost all the food, I got to see my friends and tell them all about Spain. It was tons of fun, which was great since the actual dinner went….not as planned.

The entire week before Thanksgiving my lovely Mother kept reminding me of how my grandparents might not show up because my Grandmother is a hermit and refused to go anywhere for the holidays, except the mall to shop. I had mentally prepared for my grandparents to not show up for dinner since they’re kinda kooky. No big deal. Then I got more reminders from my Mother about how to cook dinner and what to do. I took it all in and tried to stay positive, she’s only trying to be helpful. No big deal. Then I find out my Mother has decided she is going to come over to my house early to help me cook dinner. I didn’t ask for help, but I kept telling myself it’ll be fine. No big deal. Stay positive, my Mom will probably cook everything and I’ll just be watching her make everything. No big deal.

Morning of Thanksgiving my Mom calls me asks if my boyfriend and pick up her husband, then take him to pick up grandparents, then take them to my house for dinner…..why? Her husband broke his ankle and can’t drive to pick up my grandparents, and he’s the only one who can get my crazy grandparents to leave their house for dinner. Problem #1 was that my boyfriend had planned on visiting his family before our dinner, so he was unable to pick any one up. Problem #2 was my Mother then complaining about the situation. Her response to this predicament was, “Great! I knew we shouldn’t have had dinner at your place! You never think about logistics.” Gee, thanks. Happy Thanksgiving to you too, Mom. I asked her to bring her husband with her to my house so he could watch the football game and then go pick up my grandparents once my boyfriend got back, she begrudgingly gave in.

I didn’t know how to deal with this lovely bombshell the morning of Thanksgiving dinner, so I did the girly emotional thing and cried to my boyfriend. How could my Mother say this to me the morning of Thanksgiving? Why couldn’t she just be supportive? Why is my Mother acting crazy? It turns out she and her husband had a fight over the logistics, again, of which I had no knowledge of.

My boyfriend and I clean the entire house, get everything ready, move the table, get more chairs, and waited for my Mom to arrive to “help.” My boyfriend and I just finished eating breakfast when she showed up in a tizzy. She had a cloud hanging over her head the moment she entered to door. Moments later she began barking orders and complaining about how she was thanked for coming over to help, to which I replied, “I never asked you to help. You offered, I didn’t say no, and now you’re acting weird and stressing me out. Please calm down and sit, I’ll get things started.” To which she yelled back, “You don’t even have the oven on! How are you going to help? You haven’t gotten up to do anything.” From there it just got worse. I explained to her she needed to chill out and that I felt she hadn’t been very supportive and I needed her to stop being so rude. She refused, I got more upset, and then I told her she had to leave if she couldn’t calm down and be nice. BOMBSHELL! She accused me of cussing her out, which didn’t happen, stormed out, and never came back. I was astonished she left, that she acted so bizarre, and most of all that she didn’t think she did anything wrong the entire time. That it was okay for my Mother to miss my first Thanksgiving dinner at my home. I was devastated and worst of all, my boyfriend couldn’t go to see his family because he was too busy consoling me and making sure I didn’t stay on the couch crying the entire night.

After a few moments of self loathing my boyfriend encouraged me to get off the couch and start cooking to occupy my mind, which helped. I hadn’t put the turkey in the oven yet and I still had an entire dinner to make, by myself. Despite the horrible fight I was still excited to make Thanksgiving dinner. A few hours later my Mom decided to text me that my Uncle would be bringing the rest of the family to dinner and that she and her husband were staying home. She had a headache and his foot was bothering him. Awesome. And by awesome I mean WTF!? She apologized via text message and assured me I would still be getting my iPhone 4s for Christmas, because you know, that’s what’s important to me (insert sarcasm).

Que to the crying for another ten minutes, and then back to finishing dinner. Focus on dinner. Focus on cleaning the kitchen. Focus on how good the food will taste. Anything to distract me from being disappointed on Thanksgiving. Que a few hours later and my Uncle, Brother, and family are running late. No big deal, they’re always late. Plus, due to the awesome events of the evening the turkey was running late on being done, so they saved me the trouble of having to worry about it still cooking. The moments turn in to anxious minutes, then an hour, than another.

Finally they arrive!

“Where is grandma and grandpa? Did they come with our other cousin?”

“Yeah…they’re not coming. They decided a few hours ago not to come. Where’s your Mom?”

“Yeah…she’s not coming either.”

Awesome. Luckily for me my Uncle was sympathetic to the “Mom Situation” and proceeded to tell me how dinner would be better without them because they would just stress everyone out and complain the whole time. He said my turkey was the best he’d ever had and they happily ate a bunch of food and took some home with them. It was only the six of us (my boyfriend and I, my Uncle, his Wife, his Daughter and my Brother), but it was the least (at the end of the night) stressful dinner we’ve ever had. I felt better after we had all eaten and had a few drinks with dinner. Even though the day didn’t go as planned I have learned one very important lesson: never volunteer to cook a holiday dinner for my family again. For now.

Every year I tell myself holidays with the family will get better, but some how they just get more complicated. Never again. I’ll just cook a pie next time.